Dear Children,
I am sitting here this morning listening to the news tell me that unemployment has now hit a 34 year high (last week it was reported to be a 28 year high; we are heading in the wrong direction apparently).
So, as I sip ethiopian coffee on a danish table clacking this out on a chinese-made computer I am listening to a british singer belt out this tune. It seems to suit the mood of the morning.
Wake up you sleepy head
Put on some clothes, shake up your bed
Put another log on the fire for me
Ive made some breakfast and coffee
Look out my window what do I see
A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me
All the nightmares came today
And it looks as though theyre here to stay
What are we coming to
No room for me, no fun for you
I think about a world to come
Where the books were found by the golden ones
Written in pain, written in awe
By a puzzled man who questioned
What we were here for
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though theyre here to stay
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Dont you know youre driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Dont you know youre driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the homo superior
Look at your children
See their faces in golden rays
Dont kid yourself they belong to you
Theyre the start of a coming race
The earth is a bitch
Weve finished our news
Homo sapiens have outgrown their use
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though theyre here to stay
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Dont you know youre driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Dont you know youre driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the homo superior
So, children, as the day begins I flip to Eric Clapton's "Let it Grow." A happier note to leave you on and begin my work...
Im standin at the crossroads
Tryin to read the signs
To tell me which way I should
Go to find the answer
And all the time I know
Let your love and let it grow.
Let it grow, let it grow,
Let it blossom, let it flow.
In the sun and in the snow
Love is lovely, let it grow.
Lookin for a reason
To check out on my mind.
Its so hard to find a
Friend that I can count on.
Theres nothin left to show,
Plant your love and let it grow.
Let it grow...
Time is gettin shorter
And theres much for you to do,
Only askn you will get what you are needin,
The rest is up to you.
Plant your love and let it grow.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
D is for Dodd, Daschle, Dumb and Dumber
Dear Senator Dodd,
You were treated as a VIP by Countrywide when you were also charged with overseeing them. You should acknowledge that your behavior in securing a loan through them does not pass the smell test at the very least.
You claim your wife provided the loan documents? Please. When -- for God's sake -- are any of you so-called leaders going to simply say "I am sorry. I recognize that this could have been handled differently. I will seek to do better. Please forgive me."
Is that too much to ask?
The American public has proven over and over that it can be forgiving and patient. Why bury us in legal briefs and third-party verifications after the fact? Why not just pledge to act transparently from the beginning?
Perhaps you've been in the Senate too long.
As for you, Senator Daschle...
I applaud you for stepping aside and for recognizing, ultimately, that you made some poor decisions. Good for you.
Why you needed to go through the process of trying to move your appointment to HHS along as far as you did is troubling. You did not pay your taxes. There is no way that you could not have known, from my view, that using a car and driver as often as you did was not taxable. If that is your excuse, then you are naive at best.
Drive your own car from now on. Simple.
To all Members of Congress:
We the people want you to lead us and we want you to succeed. We want to celebrate your talents and your hard work to reach such a position of responsibility. We want you to protect us and serve the greater good. We want you to believe that by working with other smart people you can solve the problems of the world. We elected you to a place we hold dear under a flag that many before you have died for -- many under horrendous conditions. Each time you make decision that is designed at its base to enrich yourself or your friends over the needs and necessities of the greater good, you spit in the face of the dead who helped build our democracy.
So, ask yourself:
Am I in Congress to serve the people, or myself? Be honest. It's a simple question. If you can't answer this question correcly, then what are you doing there? It is unethical and immoral for you to run for public office if your driving motivation is to serve your own ego. Illinois' disgraced former governor, Mr. Blagojevich may not have done anything illegal, but he made clear in plain language that he held the democratic process in contempt.
Am I in Congress to be a participant in a great democracy or a player in a small autocracy?
If you achieve a leadership position among leaders in the Congress, will you use your power to help people or to punish those who do not believe in your ideology?
Am I in Congress to practice the art of compromise or are you there to defend the dogma of the day served up by talk radio critics far from the "sausage factory" every day?
Finally, your legacy will depend on the small actions and kindnesses you take each day, not by large leaps of legislative action. You are the sum of your decisions, not your individual decisions no matter what cynical media pundits might suggest.
You were treated as a VIP by Countrywide when you were also charged with overseeing them. You should acknowledge that your behavior in securing a loan through them does not pass the smell test at the very least.
You claim your wife provided the loan documents? Please. When -- for God's sake -- are any of you so-called leaders going to simply say "I am sorry. I recognize that this could have been handled differently. I will seek to do better. Please forgive me."
Is that too much to ask?
The American public has proven over and over that it can be forgiving and patient. Why bury us in legal briefs and third-party verifications after the fact? Why not just pledge to act transparently from the beginning?
Perhaps you've been in the Senate too long.
As for you, Senator Daschle...
I applaud you for stepping aside and for recognizing, ultimately, that you made some poor decisions. Good for you.
Why you needed to go through the process of trying to move your appointment to HHS along as far as you did is troubling. You did not pay your taxes. There is no way that you could not have known, from my view, that using a car and driver as often as you did was not taxable. If that is your excuse, then you are naive at best.
Drive your own car from now on. Simple.
To all Members of Congress:
We the people want you to lead us and we want you to succeed. We want to celebrate your talents and your hard work to reach such a position of responsibility. We want you to protect us and serve the greater good. We want you to believe that by working with other smart people you can solve the problems of the world. We elected you to a place we hold dear under a flag that many before you have died for -- many under horrendous conditions. Each time you make decision that is designed at its base to enrich yourself or your friends over the needs and necessities of the greater good, you spit in the face of the dead who helped build our democracy.
So, ask yourself:
Am I in Congress to serve the people, or myself? Be honest. It's a simple question. If you can't answer this question correcly, then what are you doing there? It is unethical and immoral for you to run for public office if your driving motivation is to serve your own ego. Illinois' disgraced former governor, Mr. Blagojevich may not have done anything illegal, but he made clear in plain language that he held the democratic process in contempt.
Am I in Congress to be a participant in a great democracy or a player in a small autocracy?
If you achieve a leadership position among leaders in the Congress, will you use your power to help people or to punish those who do not believe in your ideology?
Am I in Congress to practice the art of compromise or are you there to defend the dogma of the day served up by talk radio critics far from the "sausage factory" every day?
Finally, your legacy will depend on the small actions and kindnesses you take each day, not by large leaps of legislative action. You are the sum of your decisions, not your individual decisions no matter what cynical media pundits might suggest.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Eugene O'Neill Said It Best in 1933 in the Play "Days Without End"
"I listen to people talking about this universal breakdown we are in and I marvel at their stupid cowardice.
It is so obvious that they deliberately cheat themselves because their fear of change won't let them face the truth. They don't want to understand what has happened to them. All they want is to start the merry-go-round of blind greed all over again.
They no longer know what they want this country to be, what they want it to become, where they want it to go. It has lost all meaning for them except as pig-wallow. And so their lives as citizens have no beginnings, no ends. They have lost the ideal of the Land of the Free.
Freedom demands initiative, courage, the need to decide what life must mean to oneself. To them, that is terror. They explain away their spiritual cowardice by whining that the time for individualism is past, when it is their courage to possess their own souls which is dead — and stinking!
No, they don't want to be free. Slavery means security — of a kind, the only kind they have courage for. It means they need not to think. They have only to obey orders from owners who are, in turn, their slaves!
◦ John: Act 3, Scene 2
It is so obvious that they deliberately cheat themselves because their fear of change won't let them face the truth. They don't want to understand what has happened to them. All they want is to start the merry-go-round of blind greed all over again.
They no longer know what they want this country to be, what they want it to become, where they want it to go. It has lost all meaning for them except as pig-wallow. And so their lives as citizens have no beginnings, no ends. They have lost the ideal of the Land of the Free.
Freedom demands initiative, courage, the need to decide what life must mean to oneself. To them, that is terror. They explain away their spiritual cowardice by whining that the time for individualism is past, when it is their courage to possess their own souls which is dead — and stinking!
No, they don't want to be free. Slavery means security — of a kind, the only kind they have courage for. It means they need not to think. They have only to obey orders from owners who are, in turn, their slaves!
◦ John: Act 3, Scene 2
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Election Day 2008
Dear Children:
Today is election day 2008. As time goes by, some will want to cast this election as the most important in a generation or more. I want you to know that as I sit here this morning, I don't agree with that. Every election is important in its own way. One is no more critical than another. Whether its an election for mayor, sheriff, water district representative or president, what matters most is that you participate and vote.
If anything, what made this election important is that voters are paying more attention. And that's exactly what you need to do, pay attention. We have all seen what kind of leaders we get when do the opposite.
You need to vote because:
1. It's how you demonstrate that you are a responsible citizen.
2. It's respectful to the candidates who have sacrificed time with their families, friends and their own personal time to step into a hot spotlight to lead.
3. And, voting is how you pay homage to the millions of people over the past two hundred years who have bled, suffered and died so that you might have the legacy of freedom to vote as you see fit.
It matters not a wit whether the next president of the United States is Barack Obama or John McCain or Barney the Purple Dinosaur. What matters most is that your voice is part of the chorus. It's fine to be frustrated or even cynical about the process we go through in this country to elect our leaders. It's very chaotic and dynamic, multivariate and even maddening. It can also make you want to just ignore it and cloak oneself in apathy. And, many do.
Your father must confess that he waited until the last possible moment to vote in this particular election. At one point, I was so disgusted by the volume of vacuous media coverage, that I actually considered not voting at all. For someone who has been politically active and aware since the age of eight, that was a bit of a surprise.
Our media decided a year ago that the country needed Barack Obama, so it seemed that if I voted for Obama I would be a just one more tool of the manipulators in the media. If I voted for John McCain then maybe I'd be throwing my vote away. After careful consideration, I made a decision to consider one simple issue first before all others. That issue for me was/is my own subjective measure of each candidate's honor and integrity. Honor to himself, his family, and his country. Honor to something bigger than himself. Integrity in his ability to sacrifice himself repeatedly for a higher purpose.
None of the candidates could reach the high bar that your grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts and uncles set long before you arrived in this world. Those people put their families before themselves time after time and gave me thousands of reminders of the value of honor and integrity and sacrifice. Political candidates more often than not consider themselves over their families. Running for and holding a political office is extremely time-consuming and requires a significant sacrifice. Ambition is not the best trait for leading and nurturing a family. So, it was challenging to pick through what was left.
In the end, the candidate I chose was deeply flawed, but their honor and integrity had been long-tested, is consistent and more substantive than their rivals and their record shows that they are willing to consider the greater good over their own ambitions a good deal of the time. I'll let you determine who that was. In America we have the right to keep our vote private and I intend to do just that. Who I voted for is not nearly as important as voting itself.
Our country is not perfect. It is the sum of its parts; imperfect people generally all striving in cumbersome unison for a few noble ideas. Those ideas include protecting freedom and free choice and the need for humans to maintain a voice in how their lives are organized, managed and led. It's your job to stay involved in your democracy no matter how much you might find the effort inconvenient, irritating or even insulting. Your vote does matter and it counts.
Today is election day 2008. As time goes by, some will want to cast this election as the most important in a generation or more. I want you to know that as I sit here this morning, I don't agree with that. Every election is important in its own way. One is no more critical than another. Whether its an election for mayor, sheriff, water district representative or president, what matters most is that you participate and vote.
If anything, what made this election important is that voters are paying more attention. And that's exactly what you need to do, pay attention. We have all seen what kind of leaders we get when do the opposite.
You need to vote because:
1. It's how you demonstrate that you are a responsible citizen.
2. It's respectful to the candidates who have sacrificed time with their families, friends and their own personal time to step into a hot spotlight to lead.
3. And, voting is how you pay homage to the millions of people over the past two hundred years who have bled, suffered and died so that you might have the legacy of freedom to vote as you see fit.
It matters not a wit whether the next president of the United States is Barack Obama or John McCain or Barney the Purple Dinosaur. What matters most is that your voice is part of the chorus. It's fine to be frustrated or even cynical about the process we go through in this country to elect our leaders. It's very chaotic and dynamic, multivariate and even maddening. It can also make you want to just ignore it and cloak oneself in apathy. And, many do.
Your father must confess that he waited until the last possible moment to vote in this particular election. At one point, I was so disgusted by the volume of vacuous media coverage, that I actually considered not voting at all. For someone who has been politically active and aware since the age of eight, that was a bit of a surprise.
Our media decided a year ago that the country needed Barack Obama, so it seemed that if I voted for Obama I would be a just one more tool of the manipulators in the media. If I voted for John McCain then maybe I'd be throwing my vote away. After careful consideration, I made a decision to consider one simple issue first before all others. That issue for me was/is my own subjective measure of each candidate's honor and integrity. Honor to himself, his family, and his country. Honor to something bigger than himself. Integrity in his ability to sacrifice himself repeatedly for a higher purpose.
None of the candidates could reach the high bar that your grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts and uncles set long before you arrived in this world. Those people put their families before themselves time after time and gave me thousands of reminders of the value of honor and integrity and sacrifice. Political candidates more often than not consider themselves over their families. Running for and holding a political office is extremely time-consuming and requires a significant sacrifice. Ambition is not the best trait for leading and nurturing a family. So, it was challenging to pick through what was left.
In the end, the candidate I chose was deeply flawed, but their honor and integrity had been long-tested, is consistent and more substantive than their rivals and their record shows that they are willing to consider the greater good over their own ambitions a good deal of the time. I'll let you determine who that was. In America we have the right to keep our vote private and I intend to do just that. Who I voted for is not nearly as important as voting itself.
Our country is not perfect. It is the sum of its parts; imperfect people generally all striving in cumbersome unison for a few noble ideas. Those ideas include protecting freedom and free choice and the need for humans to maintain a voice in how their lives are organized, managed and led. It's your job to stay involved in your democracy no matter how much you might find the effort inconvenient, irritating or even insulting. Your vote does matter and it counts.
Monday, October 20, 2008
The Subprime Mortgage Crisis - A primer
Thanks to my friend, Bryant, for sending this clever presentation on the subprime crisis.
http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1
http://docs.google.com/
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Sarah Palin Holds Her Own. Biden/Palin a Draw
Dear Ones,
Seems like Governor Palin dodged a potentially fatal political bullet tonight. Senator Biden did well, too. So, what was being touted as the most watched vice presidential debate in history (does the media ever tire of superlatives?), turned out to be nothing more monumental than the kind of debate you might engage in at a cocktail party.
Every American should be gratified that these two people acted like fine Americans and not like guests on Jerry Springer. I think we can also see in Sarah Palin the kind of leader we saw in Ronald Reagan: an unflappable belief in the power of hope and belief in America. It's dogmatic, but the schtick works like a charm.
No question that Senator Biden's experience is far and away more impressive and significant than Governor Palin's. But, perhaps this election is not about what we should've done, but what we can do when we first believe that we can.
Seems like Governor Palin dodged a potentially fatal political bullet tonight. Senator Biden did well, too. So, what was being touted as the most watched vice presidential debate in history (does the media ever tire of superlatives?), turned out to be nothing more monumental than the kind of debate you might engage in at a cocktail party.
Every American should be gratified that these two people acted like fine Americans and not like guests on Jerry Springer. I think we can also see in Sarah Palin the kind of leader we saw in Ronald Reagan: an unflappable belief in the power of hope and belief in America. It's dogmatic, but the schtick works like a charm.
No question that Senator Biden's experience is far and away more impressive and significant than Governor Palin's. But, perhaps this election is not about what we should've done, but what we can do when we first believe that we can.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Henry Paulson, Would You Please Go Now
“I think the danger is to just look through that lens, to lose a sense of perspective and rush toward harsh regulations that are unnecessary. Some regulation will be necessary, some changes in accounting rules.” -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, after a previous Wall Street scandal.
Please, folks, let's get real here and demand that Henry Paulson move along. His kind of self-serving leadership is what got us in to the mess we are in now. His first instinct when Lehman Bros. and AIG began to unravel was to protect his friends first. His instinct now is to save his own reputation which upon close examination, needs a good scrubbing. I know I need a bath just thinking about the rhetorical jibberish he's been spouting over the past couple of weeks (a "bail out" is now a "rescue?" Are you kidding me?)
The fact is that a wolf is not what we need guarding the hen house any longer. Where is Ralph Nader when we need him? Or, a successor to his early approaches of holding powerful people accountable (cira 1970; not the Ralph Nader of 1998).
Our Congress is doing a good job of asking tough questions. I am glad they stalled for a few days to allow some of the Paulson-engineered fog to clear. I am equally pleased to see the U.S. Senate approve a bill that makes a good deal more sense than the first one even though it is far from perfect. Naturally, every American should be looking very closely at this bill as, at the end of the day, it was passed by a chamber that is comprised of some of the richest people in the world.
Our media needs to continue to ask tough questions of people like Mr. Paulson and our President, who looks more like a cooked duck than a lame one these days. The only reporter out there asking the tough questions so far is Lou Dobbs of CNN. He knows Wall Street better than almost any reporter. He's been calling for Mr. Paulson's resignation for days. Perhaps someone is listening?
Please, folks, let's get real here and demand that Henry Paulson move along. His kind of self-serving leadership is what got us in to the mess we are in now. His first instinct when Lehman Bros. and AIG began to unravel was to protect his friends first. His instinct now is to save his own reputation which upon close examination, needs a good scrubbing. I know I need a bath just thinking about the rhetorical jibberish he's been spouting over the past couple of weeks (a "bail out" is now a "rescue?" Are you kidding me?)
The fact is that a wolf is not what we need guarding the hen house any longer. Where is Ralph Nader when we need him? Or, a successor to his early approaches of holding powerful people accountable (cira 1970; not the Ralph Nader of 1998).
Our Congress is doing a good job of asking tough questions. I am glad they stalled for a few days to allow some of the Paulson-engineered fog to clear. I am equally pleased to see the U.S. Senate approve a bill that makes a good deal more sense than the first one even though it is far from perfect. Naturally, every American should be looking very closely at this bill as, at the end of the day, it was passed by a chamber that is comprised of some of the richest people in the world.
Our media needs to continue to ask tough questions of people like Mr. Paulson and our President, who looks more like a cooked duck than a lame one these days. The only reporter out there asking the tough questions so far is Lou Dobbs of CNN. He knows Wall Street better than almost any reporter. He's been calling for Mr. Paulson's resignation for days. Perhaps someone is listening?
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